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Ordinarily, the National Football League's Head Coach of the Year award adheres to a simple script. It frequently functions as a kind of apology. Our apologies we misjudged your team in our pre-campaign predictions.

Theoretically, it's a clear-cut trajectory: the skipper who oversaw the largest turnaround receives the award. However, it creates an yearly discussion about preseason outlooks and whether we're truly rewarding superior coaching or simply the greatest shock.

But this year's race is profoundly different. The pool of nominees is exceptionally deep. It has been the season of resurgences. The NFL has been chaotic, with reigning division winners fading and recent also-rans improving together. In an ordinary season, a coach leading the Denver Broncos to the summit of the conference would make him the stone-cold front-runner. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's competing with five other exceptional candidates.

Here is how the ideal ballot should look.

5) Ben Johnson, Chicago Bears, 11-5

Coach of the Year selectors love QBs. History shows this. A certain coach in 2017. Kevin Stefanski in 2020. Brian Daboll in 2022. Should you solve a quarterback, you're well on your way to winning the award.

The Bears' head coach hasn't just corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. Given a proper environment, the QB has been afforded the chance to display his otherworldly ability. Since midseason onward, the Bears rank fourth in offensive Expected Points Added per play. That's not a hot streak – it's sustained excellence. Under Johnson, the quarterback has become more decisive, less reckless, and has eagerly submitted to the gameplan instead of improvising. It is an offense constructed entirely in the coach's image: a physical ground attack, a heavy dose of play-action and a creative aerial game that creates wide receiver receivers consistently. Williams has taken advantage. And when easy reads haven't been there, he's been able to conjure magic out of broken plays.

Johnson came to the Bears with a defined offensive blueprint. Virtually each decision – rebuilding the trenches, featuring the pass-catchers, turning the QB into a rhythm passer – has paid off. This is uncommon for a rookie skipper. And it's rarer yet for a leader who walked into the building with the immense pressure Johnson did. For two straight cycles, he was the top candidate on the head coaching carousel. However when it comes to hiring a head coach, there are zero guarantees. Somehow, he has lived up to the hype – and even exceeded them. He's proven not only to be a offensive dork but the kind of culture builder that can breathe fresh energy into an franchise.

In a typical year, Johnson would be the overwhelming choice. Yet this is not a typical year!

Where Johnson's case runs a bit unstuck is on the defensive side. The Bears presently sit 25th in defensive success rate. They are living on takeaways, and turnovers are famously unreliable. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but nobody can ensure it. He is on the list because the offense is sustainable. He's ranked lower because luck is doing too much of the defense's heavy lifting. If not for a couple bounces of the ball, the team would be two victories behind. It's been an remarkable turnaround, and the core is in place for long-term winning. But he comes up short here.

4) Liam Coen, His Team, Their Record

Coen is in a similar situation to his counterpart. He's a fellow first-time head coach who has orchestrated a swift turnaround. During the crucial final weeks of the season, he has Trevor Lawrence playing the best overall football of his professional life. And he's also overseen the transformation of a defense that now ranks number five in the league in EPA per play.

What's more impressively, Coen has excelled at the intangibles aspects, which wasn't a guarantee following his early public appearances and some of his preseason moves.

Coen took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced coaching staff. Unlike other coaches, who packed themselves with the perfect coaching blend of youth and experience, Coen hired first-timers. Starting with the head coach himself to assistants to position coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of approach is intriguing in theory, but often fails in reality – as past failures are a cautionary tale – because everyone is figuring out a their job on the fly. Yet Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

Following an initial hot start, there was a possibility that the campaign would go off the track. A midseason collapse caused the team wobbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Rather, he streamlined things. The offense stopped pursuing home-run answers and started hunting consistent ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the ground attack, and asked Lawrence to use his mobility more often.

The outcomes are clear. The Jaguars have won multiple games consecutively and will be the conference's No 3 playoff seed. Coen receives the slightest knock in the rankings because he inherited a talented team, but he has demonstrated he can get the most out of that talent.

3) The Seattle Seahawks Coach, His Team, 13-3

Every Strong of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For Mike Macdonald, it was his QB choice.

Moving on from a veteran, signing a new signal-caller and partnering him with an innovative offensive coordinator could have derailed the campaign in October. Instead, it made it. By the middle point of the season, the acquisition was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has fallen away since that hot streak, dropping to a lower rank in EPA per dropback over the latter part of the season, putting him only a single spot ahead of other QBs.

Still